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Comment by _2d30 | Hacker News Reader

How was this Google’s fault? Seems clearly like Radix’s fault.

If a newspaper publishes a false story about a business and someone takes it upon themselves to attack the business, it's partially the newspaper's fault.

If a newspaper publishes a story about a business and someone takes it upon themselves to attack the business, the attacker is at fault, regardless of the veracity of the newspapers claims.

I am in Canada, but I think it is the same in the US? A newspaper can be responsible here. For example, if they say "people should riot" and a riot happens, the newspaper could be responsible for all actions that resulted the same as if they were the ones doing the crime.

Same with if they become aware of defamation and fail to retract and make a statement. But newspapers will generally also thoroughly investigate themselves to make sure what they are publishing is true.

It is not the same in the U.S. (And, to be honest, I'm quite doubtful this is true in Canada, though I could be persuaded through legal citations that it is.)

"Under the Criminal Code of Canada (Section 21), you can be charged as a "party" to an offence if you were involved in planning, "encouraging", or aiding in its commission" Criminal Code (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46)

"21(1) Parties to Offence: Anyone who actually commits the offense, aids in committing it, or abets (encourages) someone in committing it is a party to the offense."

I work in a law firm but NAL. I could probably find some cases if I had time. Most of the responses from people saying defamation is not very successful and "good luck" in the us because of 1A seem strange to me also.

Whom are you quoting here? Looks a lot like LLM slop.

I’m not sure you got the law right. “Abetting” does not mean encouragement. And the code itself does not have “(encourages)” in parentheses in it. The text of the code is right here: https://www.statutes.ca/r-s-c-1985-c-c-46/21

Since you work in a law firm, maybe you should ask your colleagues.

I added the quotes, it clearly was not taken directly word for word and it was written in plain English for clarity.

Perhaps spend less time picking apart comments and trolling on the internet if you do not know the definitions of words?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abet

1 : to actively second and encourage (something, such as an activity or plan) abet the commission of a crime 2 : to assist or support (someone) in the achievement of a purpose The singer was abetted by a skillful accompanist. especially : to assist, encourage, instigate, or support with criminal intent in attempting or carrying out a crime —often used in the phrase aid and abet accused of aiding and abetting a criminal

abet implies both assisting and encouraging.

And further,

https://nprobinson.com/blog/parties-to-an-offence-in-crimina...

Who Is Considered a Party to an Offence? Under s. 21(1) of the Criminal Code, you may be considered a party to an offence if you:

Section 21(1)(a) Committed the crime yourself (the principal); Section 21(1)(b) Assisted someone else in committing it (aided); Section 21(1)(c) Encouraged or promoted its commission (abetted).

I won't put quotes around the words this time.

> I added the quotes, it clearly was not taken directly word for word and it was written in plain English for clarity.

You mean you had an LLM write it. This is the second time you’ve done that in this conversation. Please stop. It’s giving you incorrect or misleading information. Bona fide lawyers are finding themselves subject to disciplinary action for relying on LLMs, which have been found to falsify law and cases: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-appeals-court-or...

Please, I beg you, go talk to your colleagues instead of armchair lawyering here. The law does not always adhere to dictionary definitions. It has been interpreted over the centuries and courts follow those interpretations. Besides, “Encourages” is a different word than “abets,” and merely offering support in the verbal or spiritual sense is very unlikely to lead to prosecution and conviction. If you can find a single case in Canada where this has happened, show us the proof.

I’m not “trolling,” I am a lawyer myself with 3 years of formal training, a Bar license, and decades of continuing education.

If you give me the number of your law firm, I will gladly call them myself.

I literally copy and pasted both quotes in my messages from the websites also referenced.

I highly doubt you are a lawyer.

Happy to send you my bona fides. Email me at otterley at otterley dot org. Please include your firm's phone number.

It's both's fault. Google for making false and clearly damaging statements (libel) and Radix for acting on them.

(IAAL but this is not legal advice.)

It’s not libel. Defamation requires a false statement of fact. Marking a website as “unsafe” is an opinion.

It's being stated as fact, not as an opinion.

(IANAL) It's not about how it's stated, but whether it can be objectively proven to be true or false. "unsafe" refers to the likelihood of something bad happening in the future. You can't prove that something bad will happen in the future, so it's opinion.

Also not a lawyer, but that makes intuitive sense. If I say "that food tastes bad", it's phrased as a fact, but a "reasonable person" (which is in fact a legal test used for some things, although I admit I'm not sure about libel) knows that there's an implicit "...to me" qualifier because the concept of taste itself is inherently subjective. My instinct is that while there are some things everyone would agree on as unsafe, it pretty quickly turns into a judgment call, and it probably makes sense to allow even ill-informed opinions that are made in good faith rather than malice or negligence. The question then becomes whether there's sufficient evidence to conclude something like that, and while the bar is lower for a libel claim than something criminal, it's still not obvious this would be provable here.

"Unsafe" is just a terribly vague word, too. As a layman, I wouldn't even know what that means with respect to a web site. What's "unsafe" about it? Is it going to shoot my dog? Is it going to drain my bank account? Is it going to give my computer a virus? Saying a web site is "unsafe" really isn't providing any interesting information, and it shouldn't be acted upon by pretty much anyone.

I agree that it’s not specific, but I disagree that it should be blindly ignored. It’s not like they have no reason whatsoever for their opinion.

This seems like a distinction without difference, given everyone in the ecosystem takes that "opinion" as true fact, including the market-leading browser produced by the "opinion"-haver.

I get that's mostly what corporate lawyers argue about, but it's functionally dishonest in this case.

I always wonder what the settlement and damages would be if google marked Amazon as a phishing site for even a few minutes.

The problem is that these gatekeepers of the internet respond to false statements of facts/opinions by so called professionals.

I had cloudflare mark a worker as phishing because a AI "security company" thought my 301 redirect to their clients website was somehow malicious. (url redirects are normal affiliate things)

If the professionals don't understand the difference and cloudflare and google blindly block things, this is scary.

There is a potentially different cause of action, tortious interference with business relationships. It does require that the defendant intended to interfere in a way that would cause harm to the plaintiff, though. Proving Google intended such harm would be difficult and expensive.

Google intends harm to everyone on that list. That's the point of the list. Google is unlikely to have intended this specific harm, but they don't have to.

That won’t cut it in court.

Why not?

Marking a website as "unsafe" in Chrome is equal to standing in front of the door of a small restaurant and blocking 71% of people going inside. Everyone first has to agree that they will enter the restaurant at their own risk.

That is more than an opinion. Chrome has a monopoly and should act accordingly. Blocking entry to a website should be a last resort, not just because someone didn't add their website to the whitelist.

Yeah. Everyone uses their list and being blocked by all web browsers is like having someone cover the doorway with a massive DANGER sign. It's insane that people are roaming around here arguing that it's ok because the damage caused is a necessity for "internet scale".

Indeed. It is almost like how the Mafia operates. This person didn't submit his website to Google and now Google blocks visitors.

Right now, any damages are completely speculative at this point. I would suspect in this case, the damages are minimal, and taken in the broader context, the good outweighs the harm. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

The good outweighs the harm until it happens to you. The problem is that even if the failure rate is low, the failure can be catastrophic for the people suffering from it.

I use Ubiquiti as an example for an update they pushed to their UniFi systems a long time ago (5+ years). Some people were configuring their devices to use an https URL to connect to a management console when it was supposed to be http. Before the update, the console accepted http on the https port. After it didn't. That caused devices to disconnect from the management portal and remain offline.

When people complained, Ubiquiti said they realized it would happen, but it "would only affect a tiny percentage of customers." However, most customers that were affected had a 100% rate of failure. One person had something like 600-700 devices that got disconnected and required manual reconfiguration.

A 1% failure rate might be ok for the company, but it shouldn't be if the 1% of people affected suffer 100% failure. The distribution of the failures needs to be considered.

I had my primary domain that my entire family has used for 25 years put on that blacklist. If I hadn't been able to get it removed it would have had a massive negative impact on my life. Had it been suspended by the registry the way the OP of this article describes, I'm not sure how it would have worked out.

So it may be a false positive of .0000000001%, but would have ruined my life. I have 900 entries in my password manager and probably half of them are tied to that domain. Is my entire digital life acceptable collateral damage? Is yours?

“Ruined your life” sounds a little overdramatic when there are people being falsely accused and convicted of crimes and being thrown in jail for life (or worse).

I don’t mean to say your experience isn’t real and that you didn’t suffer some inconveniences. But come on, have some perspective.

And what did you do to get put on that blacklist, anyway?

It isn't just chrome. Firefox, Safari, and Edge also use that list.

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